Hurray! While humans are talking about emotional topics like guns and school shooting, brute thought it'd be a great idea to talk about abortion as well. Another one of those blue-team vs. red-team "arguments" that really shouldn't be arguments in brute's mind.

Disclaimer:
- brute grew up in cosmopolitan surroundings, which predisposes him to be pro-abortion
- brute grew up an atheist and is still an atheist
- brute doesn't have or know any children personally
- brute doesn't know anyone who's had an abortion (or does not know of it)
- brute doesn't care too much about "women's health", because he thinks women are just humans too

brute will explain his view of the whole debate and then would be interested to hear humans explain their views.

in order for this not to end up in a slaughter fest of tribalism, brute suggests that each poster will split their post into 2 parts:
- first an explanation of their position or whatever
- second, an attempt to emotionally understand the other (or both) sides and why they could be arguing what they're arguing

brute hopes that this will prevent some of the shit flinging that happens in this debate a lot.

ok, disclaimers out of the way, here's brute's position:
- this debate is highly tribalized, but there isn't actually that much disagreement, or rather, the point of disagreement is extremely narrow
- everybody agrees that killing a newborn child is murder and not good
- everybody agrees that before conception, there is no life
- the maximum amount of disagreement is therefore at which point during a 9 month pregnancy life begins
- therefore this is not a women's rights or women's health issue per se, only on the margin where birth would be a threat to the woman's life
- it would hypothetically possible to have a 100% successful and great adoption system, so that women who didn't want to raise children could give them away and that would be great. brute realizes the actual adoption system is a terrible mess. but it might be worth separating these points?
- the main point seems to brute: when does life begin? the science doesn't seem to be super clear. there are various dimensions like "it has limbs", "it has a central nervous system", "it can feel pain", "it could survive outside the womb". the last point is currently the deciding factor in US abortion law: viability outside of the womb. this is currently estimated to be at 24 weeks.
- in worldwide comparison, 24 weeks is extremely late - most European countries seem to set the limit at the first trimester, or 12 weeks. of course exceptions are made for danger to the child or mother's health or other circumstances.

brute concludes that the whole deal of this debate is when a thing becomes a human life. any current decision seems arbitrary, so brute understands the right's position of "hey if it's unclear let's maybe not kill it until we know for sure". but emotionally, "abortion" does not sound like "child murder" to brute, maybe a consequence of his liberal upbringing.

this is the part where brute will try to empathize with humans of both sides to potentially not turn this into a shit flinging contest.

red team perspective:

brute thinks that, mostly due to cultural/upbringing reasons, red team members think of this as a "murder of an unborn child" debate. of course murdering children is very very bad.

brute also thinks that some of the antics/demands of the blue team, like "legal abortion until the very last day", are taken by red team provocateurs to strawman the blue team. at 1 day before birth, it's pretty much child murder unless there's danger to the child's/mother's life.

there is the whole thing with the "Sex and the City" type cultural stereotype, of urban women sleeping around and using abortion ("YOLO!") instead of condoms. brute has no statistics, but presumes that most urban educated women actually use birth control pretty effectively, and therefore assumes this to be a strawman position. but it probably does happen to some degree, and brute can understand red team members not liking the idea at all.

blue team perspective:

brute has the impression that blue team members view this primarily as a women's rights issue. most blue team members probably don't find abortion super fun and great, but as a necessary evil. a surprising number of pregnancies go wrong, and sometimes women have to make terrible choices to live or at least not risk their lives.

brute also assumes that most blue team members don't promote abortion on the very last day, but somewhere in the first trimester, where it's pretty much not a fully formed human child yet.

therefore blue team members probably perceive the red team position as a restriction on necessary, tragic medical procedures that women might need (unfortunately, but realistically) sometimes.

brute hasn't met a human woman who proudly gloated about her abortion record. this leads brute to believe that even blue team human women don't get abortions because it's so much fun.

brute also gets that even educated urban human women are human and therefore extremely fallible - and might take their pills on the wrong day, or have the condom break, or whatever. mistakes happen. even if it was possible to give a healthy child away to live happily ever after, a 9 month pregnancy is a pretty dramatic impact on a human woman's life, health, career, pretty much everything. so in the (probably) small number of cases where it is really just a "oops that was a mistake" abortion, brute presumes human women will be aborting in the very first week they find out or so, i.e. easily within the beginning of the first trimester. (brute has been told human women bleed once a month until they are pregnant, and would therefore likely find out within 4 weeks).

personally, brute feels OK about first month "oops" abortions, but he could understand if red team members with their sanctity of life would view that as some Sodom and Gomorrah urban decadence insult to humanity.

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fight! just kidding, productive discussion? did brute miss anything? apparently there are now human women on the internet, so maybe some of them can let brute know the female perspective, which he obviously can't fully grasp. maybe some red team members (born and raised!) can chime in, as brute can only try to understand their perspective, never having been on the red team. brute finds recently he can learn more from the red team than he'd previously imagined.

Maybe we should pace ourselves here a bit. Save abortion for after the gun thread dies down. Just half kidding here, but if you go to off-topic at MMM it's a mess. I'd hate to see that happen here. Just my thoughts.

Conception, or fertilization, is the fusion of two *living* cells. Both descended from other living cells, and on and on going back ~4 billion years. There are no non-living intermediate stages.

I assume when people are concerned about zygotes [but not sperm or unfertilized oocytes], they think the potential-to-become-human is what's important. Otherwise, other species' unborn young and even single celled organisms would have some moral importance.

As for Brute's criteria, I was raised in a "red team" household, and I was a pro-lifer until college. But, as fate would have it, I found myself more interested in studying Embryology and Evolution more than any other subject I'd ever read. How do a bunch of inert molecules organize themselves into a living thing? Science actually has the answer to that, mostly.

Anyway, its hard to justify a fundamentalist evangelical christian worldview once you've seen the explanatory power of those two fields.

Conception, or fertilization, is the fusion of two *living* cells. Both descended from other living cells, and on and on going back ~4 billion years. There are no non-living intermediate stages.

interesting. maybe "there is no life" is too colloquial a choice of words then. brute assumes from the rest of his post that ThisDinosaur would not be opposed to aborting pre-conception, and therefore "life" is not the criterion by which to make decisions on abortion?

As for Brute's criteria, I was raised in a "red team" household, and I was a pro-lifer until college. But, as fate would have it, I found myself more interested in studying Embryology and Evolution more than any other subject I'd ever read. How do a bunch of inert molecules organize themselves into a living thing? Science actually has the answer to that, mostly.

Anyway, its hard to justify a fundamentalist evangelical christian worldview once you've seen the explanatory power of those two fields.

from what brute has heard from biologists and evolutionists it didn't seem super clear-cut what a non-arbitrary answer would be. would ThisDinosaur enlighten brute as to the current state of his knowledge and how the explanatory power of it would inform an opinion on abortion?

I'm not saying biologists have a "super clear cut non-arbitrary" answer to the morality of abortion. I think that the answer to that depends on your answer to *why* its wrong to kill any human being. Your answer to that will probably go a long way to figuring out whether there is a difference between killing a zygote, a 9 week human embryo, a fetus, an infant, an anencephalic, a person with PVS or brain damage, an ape, a monkey, a lemur, farm animals ............................

The insight you get from learning about biology is that the human tendency to categorize things into specific little boxes does not fit well with reality.

To me, the question of 'when is it a person' is just distracting semantics.

IMO it's a human as soon as whatever the first thing is that happens after fertilization (or, at least, by the fist cell division). From a non-personal, grand-scheme view of human kind, the main difference between using the pill for birth control (where, if I understand correctly a fertilized egg/growing whatever is discarded during mensuration) and drowning a baby 10 minutes after birth is the convenience of it being done 'automatically' vs. by hand of another human. Of course it would be different for the person actually doing the birth control/aborting/baby drowning, but we generally speak about this kind of stuff from a right/wrong or full population view, and I'm not terribly offended by some mother in Africa drowning her baby who was born without legs. So...

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Whether the fetus has become a human or not, another thing to consider is at what point is that being (no longer) the property of the woman it is inside. By property I mean something that person has full control over and can discard/destroy at will, or I suppose 'legally', something they own.

Property of humans is not used much for consideration these days in the subject of abortion, but maybe it should. I think most people consider sperm to be the man's property. And eggs to be property. Disagreement starts after fertilization. To me, it sure seems like a baby that's inside a woman is her property. It is literally in her possession. What percentage ownership does the man have of the unborn child? IMO, unless he owns the woman, he has only trust.

So then, there's another question to add to the "when is too late to abort?" question. (IMO abortion would be ok up until the point when the baby is "a person", --AND-- it is no longer the property of the mother.

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On the subject of whether it is a "woman's health" issue, it definitely is, and it should have some impact on whether abortion is ok.

For those with moral objections to ending life, it may be a secondary issue. For those who are cool with ending life, it is maybe the primary issue.

Carrying and delivering a child can be a huge burden for the mother. Here are some of the ways
- Can cause irreversible changes to their body
- Can cause permanent injury/damage to their bodies and reproductive bits - like vaginal/perineal tears. A google image search may remove any past consideration that childbirth is not a woman's health issue.
- Logistical challenges. (trying to work but puking from morning sickness. Needing maternity leave from work or whatever else they were doing. Having to eat more. Having to get new clothes. Not being able to do as many physical things)
- Hormonal changes
- Being, to some degree, "out of the market" for sex and relationships
- Social expectations/confusion/etc. (like awkward conversations at work with people who see she is pregnant and her having to explain that she doesn't want this damn baby will be giving it away)

I know many women who have had abortions. Instead of giving birth when a man didn't want the baby or having done drugs without knowing she was pregnant and birthing an unhealthy offspring, the little thing was compassionately killed before it could feel.

I think Freakonomics discussed abortions as lowering crime rates. I can see clearly how it would. Also, it has great environmental effects as it lowers the amount of humans to support. The adoption system is already satiated and this doesn't account for the burden to women's health of pregnancy.

We need to get men's choice to become a factor with the RSIUG and vasalgel that keep getting delayed.

birth control(where, if I understand correctly a fertilized egg/growing whatever is discarded during mensuration)

Women on hormonal birth control don't ovulate. No egg, no fertilization. However, in women who are not on the pill, there is an uncountable but probably large fraction of fertilized eggs that don't implant or don't implant early enough, and get discarded during the next period. What's their ethical status compared to, say, embryos frozen in a fertility clinic?

Anti-Lifers are usually concerned with a woman's right to her body. But that's usually because they take for granted that a fetus isn't a "Person." They aren't even having the same discussion as the Anti-Choicers. So people just scream at each other across a huge conceptual divide. No one who thinks a fetus is a person takes abortion lightly, and no one who thinks it isn't would tell women they don't have a choice about their own healthcare.

I've known many women who've had abortions. Its usually the hardest decision they've ever had to make. Even if you think you know what you believe, most of us never have to actually apply our metaphysical theories.

I think abortion is murder, but I´m fine with other people doing it. People should be allowed to kill their own children as long as they can´t live without them, be it trough choice or stupidity. This will allow a natural selection toward a humanity that fits my criterion for goodness better.
In the end, I think a woman has full ownership of her womb, as much as I have full ownership of my own body. If people don´t want to use their body parts (arms, brain,womb) for the good of the society, maybe the society has to die out, in the same way that, if no women wants to reproduce with me, maybe I have to die out.
Of course I really much want peope I like to make many children and don´t kill them, but I´m not ready to use force for them to do so. I really don´t like being forced to support the reproduction of people I don´t like.

In short, I´ll provide all the support I can for my friends not to abort, but the rest, they can kill as much of their offspring as they want.

To me, both other position are religious either they think that the weakest form of life (a child) as to be protected at all cost, either they think that the weakest form of right (a woman´s ownership of her own body) has to be protected at all cost. I understand why one would want to protect what they see as weak.

As a Christian, I distinguish between archetypal (original) and ectypal (a copy of the original) knowledge. Only God has archetypal knowledge. Humans are limited to ectypal knowledge. The relevancy of this distinction to this discussion is that all components of creation exist in the mind of God before they are materially created. Therefore, all people were "known" by God before the foundations of the earth i.e. before they actually appear in human form. From this perspective, the understanding of "conception" in the abortion debate is shifted to life beginning as an idea existing in the mind of God as opposed to biological union of human sperm and human egg. Ironically, epistemology (knowledge) eclipses metaphysics (being) in the debate.

Outworking of Opinion: I have been asked my opinion on this matter in terms of counsel. I stated the above. Providence is not just the Christian explanation of coincidence, determinism or karma for worldly events, it has a pre-creation, supernatural origin that extends to the existential human being that is essential to consider in the discussion.

Principal vs. Practice: The argument of conception by rape is brought up. Or if pregnancy is potentially fatal to the mother. Fine. Extreme examples do not eradicate belief systems, they merely test them. If someone came to me and said they were impregnated by rape or they are certain of death during childbirth and wanted an abortion, I would drive them to the abortion clinic. If they didn't have the money, I'd pay for it. Not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the compassionate thing to do. I am not God. I cannot live or tell people how to live from His perspective. I can only relate what He says.

Analogous Relationship to The other Side of the Debate:

Abortion as a choice imports the idea of conception as not being biological but epistemological i.e. no one plans on getting abortion before they need one. However, instead of the idea of a person existing in the mind of God, it exists in the mind of the parent. Legitimacy of the child is based on whether the parent thought about having the child before biological conception. I think anyone who has seen parents suffer from miscarriage know it's not just the baby they are mourning, there are pre-conceived ideas of the baby in the equation.

Birth Control: Hell to the yeah.

At the voting booth:

Contrary to many holding my theological beliefs, I do not reduce my vote to this one issue. I belief it's reductionist. This was a common discussion in the 2016 election when many evangelicals were tested by the Red Hat candidate. This was obviously not such a big issue with Roman Catholics, found in their Blue Hat, Kennedy expression which prioritizes the social justice, good Samaritan side of Christianity.

Part II:

The Emotional Position of The Other Side

You want an abortion, go for it. I'm not standing outside protesting, I'm not bombing the clinic, I'm not taking pot shots at the Doctors. I'm not telling you that you are going to Hell which really shouldn't bother you if you don't believe in Hell in the first place. Do I think it's murder, yes. Do I think you will suffer existentially for the rest of your life due to the decision, yes. I believe this from both studies, testimonies and personal experiences with people who have had them.

In college, I thought I knocked up a girlfriend. She wasn't. However, I would have encouraged an abortion if she was and it would have certainly been the smart thing to do if not the right thing to do. Maybe it would have made me man up in a way I never had, but it would have been a fuckin mess.

My two cents: Like guns, this is an issue that extremists on both sides fuck up. It's not a war, it's a battle. You want to battle for the unborn babies, don't do it by ripping them from a woman's womb. You want to get an abortion, fine, but don't try to vindicate the decision by a holding up a view of science that presupposes that there is not some type of narrative behind the findings (I always avoid Sunday School when the pro-lifers come in with their baby-in-the-womb dolls. It's not a scientific debate. Not to mention that shit makes me queasy). If you want to say Christianity is a bullshit story that never changes, fine. But then don't say that science is not a bullshit story that is constantly changing. Even scientists acknowledge that. In any event, everyone, including yourself, knows you are having an abortion for personal reasons, not scientific ones.

I am not quite through menopause, and I am 53. So, I was at least nominally fertile for 40 years, so within realm of possibility that I could have had somewhere between 10 and 20 children. I chose to start with the child I unplanned conceived while using the Today brand sponge and I chose to stop (had my tubes clamped) after my second child was born. I don't regret either of these decisions, although I would categorize the first in the realm of "optimistic" and the second in the realm of "prudent."

I have known women who have had an abortion and regretted the decision, and the opposite. Like most important decisions in life, I think regret is often tied to poor fulfillment of the opportunity chosen instead. For instance, one woman I know who had an abortion when she was a 19 year old college student, doesn't regret her choice because she went on to marry well and have 3 children in her late 20s, and this possibility, these 3 children she did have, would have likely not been born if she had become a single mother at 19. Another woman I know who also had an abortion when she was 19 and in college, had a terrible experience with the procedure itself, because the technician told her she was carrying twins, and then she was unable to have children when she very much wanted to have them in her 30s, so this decision still looms large in her psyche while it is just a blip in the psyche of the successful mother of 3.

A very nice aspirational class man that I briefly dated was shocked to receive a phone call from the parents of the 11 year old girl his 11 year old son was "dating" informing him that she had a pregnancy scare, because they had been sexually intimate. I think this relates to the experience of the 19 year old college girls I knew, because when a female is too young or too unprepared to have a child is very much culturally determined. For modern Americans, 19 and single and not yet graduated from college seems kind of sort of "too young" and 11 seems like an abomination. In other cultures, a knocked-up 11 year old would be married to the father and I guess he would be sent out to work in the coal mine.

Anyways, when we are thinking in terms of legalese or politics, we revert to simple stereotypical narrative to decide line between "yes and "no." Real life decisions are made within the context of complex personal narrative, so that's why my take on this issue is less "Woman's right to control her body!!!" and more in alignment with who is most likely to make the decision that most of us would also make if we had the ability to know her story.

brute is surprised that he was surprised by this, but there sure are more colorful opinions out there than he thought

brute really liked these two quotes:

My two cents: Like guns, this is an issue that extremists on both sides fuck up.

Anyways, when we are thinking in terms of legalese or politics, we revert to simple stereotypical narrative to decide line between "yes and "no." Real life decisions are made within the context of complex personal narrative, so that's why my take on this issue is less "Woman's right to control her body!!!" and more in alignment with who is most likely to make the decision that most of us would also make if we had the ability to know her story.

My personal opinion:
—I personally would not have an abortion
—saying that, my answer would probably be different if I found out the baby had a serious medical problem (Down’s, etc).
—my answer would have been different when I was in high school and college, too.
—I think that whatever I feel about abortion, it’s an issue between me, my doctor and my partner. Not the government or anyone else.
—I am a lot more “pro life” than I used to be, but I think “pro life”means all life, not just babies/zygotes/embryos. I’d really like to see the pro-life crowd adopt just as strong anti-death penalty, anti-gun, pro-universal healthcare, etc. positions. It’s really easy to love a baby. It’s a test of our love, but we should still love people who’ve committed crimes, who’ve done horrible things. Yes, I’m anti-death penalty.
—I support “pro-life” organizations who help mothers keep their babies with monetary and other support. I don’t think it’s fair to say “have that baby, but you’re on your own.” That’s not really pro-life, it’s just pro-birth.
—by the same token, I support organizations and government programs that feed and house people, etc. To go all political, I think guys who proclaim themselves as good Catholics, like Paul Ryan, but then yank the safety net from the most vulnerable people in our country (children, the disabled, old people) aren’t practicing the Catholicism and Christianity that I know.
—I think anyone who faces an abortion decision deserves love and support, no matter what they decide to do. I’ve known many people who’ve faced abortion decisions, and for none of them was the decision lightly made.

I think a lot more people actually agree with the "abortion is murder" and "murder is ok" sequence than you'd think, even if they don't express it that way. The framing of the issue around when life begins is not essential. The differences between an embryo, fetus, and baby are important, however. Conversely, the ability of modern science to keep a fetus delivered at 26, 25, 24 weeks alive has impacted people's views of when abortion is permissible greatly.

I read an interesting article about how the number of children with Down's syndrome is nowhere near where it would be without abortion. (Anecdotally I feel this to be true. You hardly ever see these kids anymore, whereas when I grew up there was always a classmate or two with a sibling who had Down's.) As a result research on Down's is impacted negatively for these families. And the author argued a natural part of human diversity has been eliminated. Hard to dispute that.

I don't like the narrative that abortion necessarily does, or, especially, *should* traumatize women and some women have pushed back against this notion, including with their own case histories. I suspect some women merely perform trauma when asked about it because it's expected.

I think the success of the prolife movement in chipping away at abortion rights is unfortunate but instructive. The fetus has gained rights it didn't have before. Have these come at the expense of women's autonomy? At least partly.

As for me I'm sure I would have aborted under certain circumstances, but probably not under others, including pretty tough ones. But I really don't know. I leave others to make their own decisions, whether easy or not.

The closest to an example from the Bible is the discussion of accidental killings, I guess what we call involuntary manslaughter. If you accidentally kill a person, you had best flee to one of the cities of refuge to wait for judgement. If the priests examine the situation and feel that you did not intend to kill the person, you have to remain in that city for a length of time (possibly for life) or the victim's next of kin had the right to kill you in retribution. If they decided that you killed the victim deliberately you were subject to being killed by the next of kin.

But if some men are brawling (don't know why that was the scenario!) and one of them accidentally bumps against a pregnant woman or otherwise knocks her down to cause her to miscarry, the only penalty is that the pregnant woman's husband (yes I know, hey I didn't write it!) can assess a fine against the man.

Personal history - wife's water broke for son #2 at 22 weeks and 3 days. Hospital gave us the choice to abort since 1) he was highly likely to die anyway and 2) even if he lived, he was gonna be fucked up for life (basically 95% chance of death or serious disability). It was tempting. In the depths of my worrying and grief was this glimmer of hope: you can wipe all this future worry away right now. It was fleeting, but I admit it was there. We declined to abort. I love my now 11-year-old son even if (because?) he is a little weirdo.

Blue team empathy / Red team criticism - Individual choice seems correct as a matter of morality and constitutionality. I believe in freedom of religion, but the red team seems to believe it only works one way: the religious can impose their beliefs on others, but not the other way around. Also, pro-life should mean more than only pro-birth as @ek points out above. The red-team's lack of internal consistency is a complete disqualifier on this issue in my view.

Red team empathy / Blue team criticism - Pro-choice should go hand-in-hand with pro-responsibility. Morality and constitutionality should demand that you shouldn't be able to foist the consequences of your poor choices on a thing that is not genetically you, whether or not that thing technically has constitutional rights. In a perfect world, abortion would be available only to those who had no choice (like rape) or for whom their responsible choice failed (condom broke). But do it as early as possible. Administering this perfect world is impossible in our imperfect world. Aborting for the health of the mother is a sophie's choice that I would not wish on anyone.

Outcome - on balance, I'm pro-choice, but when I had the choice, I decided against it.